Mind the future.

Energy infrastructure is the place to start.

Who We Are

Compass Energy Platform, LLC is a development and financing platform designed to help cities prepare for the future through district-scale energy projects that increase environmental and economic resilience. We develop and finance every sort of distributed energy asset – generation technologies, including solar, wind, fuel cells, combined heat & power (CHP) and batteries, combined with microgrids, district heating and cooling, and other smart city assets. Our investment model is based on public/private partnership (P3), and our commitment to cities includes investment in schools, hospitals, commercial/industrial entities and other key verticals.

Compass was developed by two globally-recognized market leaders – InfraRed Capital Partners and Navigant Consulting – combining InfraRed’s energy investment experience with Navigant energy advisory expertise to create a new kind of company, one particularly suited to the opportunities and complexities of 21st century energy infrastructure development.

We help cities prepare. And grow.

By derisking complex projects. By building for the future.

Our Perspective

The planet is changing. We need to work with urgency, at scale, to counteract climate change, to protect communities and help them prosper. Alongside climate change, there is simply a need to modernize the electric grid, to use distributed generation to help businesses and others save money. Compass is specifically designed to work collaboratively with local government officials, utilities, community members, business leaders and other key stakeholders — to guarantee that our projects benefit as many people as possible.

We are not your typical developer. Large-scale city energy projects are inherently complicated and risky. Our approach makes it easy for cities to undertake these projects. We take on the project’s complexity and risk, providing stakeholder engagement, business modeling, offtake agreements, engineering and construction, ownership, operation and maintenance, and, of course, financing.

Our Approach

All too often, early-stage energy project development focuses on engineering design, putting the cart before the horse, we think. Early-stage effort should focus instead on financial viability – on developing a project’s business and commercial models, on finding a way to increase the role of renewable energy, improve air quality, foster security, generate revenue, lower operating expenses and create local jobs. Only after these boxes have been checked can an engineering scope be defined that fulfills customer and community value propositions and their related financeability.

This approach, which includes our ability to provide significant project financing, creates great clarity early in the development process. As a first step, we establish a project’s Commercial Model (how will it generate revenue?) and its Business Model (how will the business actually operate?). Based on these models, we create Energy Development Scenarios that explore the technical assets and the engineering work needed to realize these models. And as we arrive at a project scope, we look for ways to leverage our investment to create broader impacts in the community. Our Community Benefits Agreement gives structure to those impacts.

The Compass process gives our project stakeholders a chance to define fully the opportunities and requirements of a given project — environmental, technical, economic, financial, social — before the details of engineering get underway. Then, it’s full speed ahead, through financing, construction and operation.

Broader impacts.

We aim to leverage our investments for the good of the community.

Our Partners

We don’t do all of this work by ourselves, of course. The Compass platform is designed for collaboration in all respects. Our platform partners bring extensive experience and skills to each stage of the development process: InfraRed Capital Partners (financing), Navigant Consulting (strategy), Burns Engineering (engineering), PowerSecure (operations & maintenance), WXY Studio (urban planning) and Greener by Design (stakeholder engagement). (We work with other firms as well, depending on project needs and stakeholder requirements.) We come to the table with all the expertise needed for a successful project.

Contact Us

Compass aims to help cities, businesses and utilities modernize their energy infrastructure, prepare for climate change, and prosper. Although our company has only recently launched, we are already developing projects in several major cities. We’d welcome an opportunity to discuss your needs, too.